Optical communication facilities provide vast amounts of bandwidth for extremely high-speed communications. In an optical communication system, an optical fiber typically carries multiple optical data streams, with each optical data stream at a different wavelength. This is typically referred to as Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM).
Unfortunately, devices that communicate over optical communication facilities are often unable to process information and otherwise operate at the extremely high speeds of the optical communication facilities. Therefore, optical communication signals are typically converted into electronic signals for processing by the devices, and are converted back into optical signals when necessary for transmitting the signals over the optical communication facilities. Such optical-to-electronic and electronic-to-optical signal conversions add substantial delay to communication paths and also add complexity to the devices.